


STR4NGER

by witchbreed



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, besides her name being 'robin banks' is infinitely funnier, i know that robin's official given surname is 'buckley' but, when i wrote that part of the story it hadnt been revealed yet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 23:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20825732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchbreed/pseuds/witchbreed
Summary: In 1985, the kids are starting their first year of high school, and learning to live apart; in 2000, events in Hawkins threaten to bring the gang back together one last time.





	STR4NGER

**CHAPTER ONE:**

**1985 / 2000.**

**HAWKINS, 1985.**

“Mom, I’m going to be fine, I promise!” Mike insisted, not for the first time, trying to escape his mother’s wet thumbs smearing around his hair.

“I know, I know! But it’s a big deal, isn't it?” Mrs. Wheeler said, adjusting his clothes one more time. “First day of high school! Are you nervous? Excited?”

“It’s fine. It’s fine”, saying so more to convince himself than his mother.

Deep down, he wanted everything to be cool and normal; like it had always been, before... before all the crazy shit had happened. Or maybe between the times where all the crazy shit had happened. When El was still around. And Will...

Cerebro had been a great help – Dustin was more of a genius than they gave him credit for. He and El had been talking almost the entire day, every day, for weeks. Sometimes the others would come around, but most of the time it was just them, together, with the great sky above them.

But it wasn’t the same thing.

Now school was going to start again, and Mrs. Byers wanted to homeschool El so she could go with Will next year, and everybody kept saying high school was gonna be harder...the distance was growing, even if they weren't moving away from each other any further.

_Just a couple more months and she can come to visit_, he thought, leaning over his bike as it pulled up near the junction, where Lucas and Dustin were already waiting for him. The spot where Will usually was more noticeable than ever.

But there was still someone else missing. “Where’s Max?” he asked, as they rode off.

“Haven’t seen her in a while.”

“You’re her _boyfriend_!”

“So? We’re not joined at the hip!”

“She dumped him again”, Dustin clarified. “For realsies this time.”

“Okay, you don’t – you don’t _know_ that!”

“We all heard it, Lucas. She was screaming it very loudly. Could not have been more clear than that.”

“Yeah, but you know how girls are! Besides, she’s been acting weird anyway. She may change her mind.”

Mike almost propelled himself into the ground when he braked his bike. “Weird? Weird how?”

“Weird-depressed, Mike. Not mind-flayed weird”, Lucas assured.

“She did see her brother get a spike put through his chest and then die in her arms. We should cut her some slack”, Dustin suggested.

“She’s not the only one going through trauma”, Mike mumbled, as the school building grew into view.

* * * * *

**HAWKINS, 2000.**

“Wheeler? Wheeler? Come on, Wheeler, answer the fucking door”, came the voice from outside, followed by several hard knocks on the wood.

Splayed out on his couch, head buried on one of his mother’s old smelly pillows, Michael tried to ignore the pestering. Maybe if he laid very, very still, she would stop buzzing him and go away. Maybe he would suffocate on the stench of mold. Maybe he would have a heart attack and die at the tender age of 29. Those all sounded like tempting offers.

None of them that would come true, unfortunately.

“I’m telling you, Wheeler, if I have to go in there, I’m going to shoot your ass”, the woman insisted.

“Jesus. God. Fine. I'm coming. Give a man some time to rest, would ya?” he complained, pulling himself up – knocking down half a dozen empty bottles of beer on the way up. The world spun around him while he struggled to stand. His pants were nowhere to be found, but at that point that was the least of his problems.

If his mother saw her old living room as it was, she would probably have a heart attack. There were clothes scattered everywhere; empty pizza boxes; bottles, and cans and dirt pilling up in towers. His uniform was in there somewhere, but it would take some scavenging to find.

“Wow. Is this how the chief of police lives?” the woman asked, waltzing in through the door. He had already found a pair of underwear by then, luckily, but it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d walk on him as he had come into the world.

“"Shut up, Sam. Why are you here, bothering me this early in the morning?”

“Okay, first of all, it’s ten o’clock. Second, there’s a situation at the station”, Samantha said, folding her arms.

“Good situation or bad situation?”

“When has it ever been a good situation, Wheeler?”

“I don’t know. We could've won that new wagon from the raffle”, he said, throwing on his jacket. There was a large ketchup spot right below the name “Hawkins P.D.”, but he was hoping she wouldn’t notice.

She had.

“It’s Troy and Jenny Etton. You gotta come and check it out.”

Michael scratched his forehead. Why couldn’t it have been a good thing?

* * * * *

The idiom “the more things change, the more they stay the same” couldn’t really be applied to Hawkins, because in the last decade and half, nothing in town had really...changed. After the events at the Starcourt Mall, there was a sudden influx of people coming into town – documentaries were made, conspiracy theories were spread, busloads of folks trying to find any evidence that there was something deeper and more sinister going on; if only they knew.

When they didn’t find anything – and the government made sure to sweep it clean of any Upside Down remnants – most of them realized that the conspiracy theories were just that: theories. They moved on with their lives. Some still came about, once or twice a year, especially when there was a rerun of the old docs on CBS, but those were just the flying saucer-type lunatics. There were certainly no investors coming, and the younger generation saw no opportunities (or reason to stay) in town, so they left too.

So now, all Hawkins had were old people who couldn’t afford to move to Florida and the burnouts who didn't find anything better elsewhere.

And Mike.

Chief of Police Michael Wheeler, actually. Two years and going. Mostly because nobody else wanted it. What was there to police in a town like that, except the occasional missing cat report? That, of course, and guys like Troy Etton - still a bully, still an asshole, but now he had other victims.

“Third time’s the charmer, huh?” he asked, leaning against the cell. Troy was there, sitting on a pool of his own vomit. Drunk, again, but Mike was not one to point fingers – at least not on that aspect.

“I didn’t do nothing”, Troy said, without raising his head.

“The bruises in your wife’s face tell a different story”, he said, folding his arms.

“I told your guys – she fell and hit her head, ‘sall.”

“Right. She fell on your fist several times. That’s believable. We’re gonna keep you in here for a couple of months, maybe then you can come up with a better lie.”

“Hey! Hey, you can’t do this! Hey! I have my rights!”

“Yeah? How about you follow the one that tells you to keep your mouth shut?” he said, slamming the door on his way out.

“We can’t actually keep him”, Sam said, soon as he was out of hearing range. “The neighbors heard the screaming, and we found the kid crying in the closet, but she doesn’t wanna press charges.”

“She here?”

“Yeah. I tried talking to her, but –”

“I’ll do it.”

Jennifer was sitting in his office. She was pale and frail and there were bruises all over her face and arms. Judging by her eyes, she had been crying – but probably not for the right reasons.

“I told Sam, Mikey – I slipped and fell. It’s not a big deal”, she said, rubbing one of her purple spots.

“You always say that, Jenny. Last time, he put you in the hospital. Next time he’ll put you in a grave.”

He sat down next to her, resting his hand over hers. She let out a whimper. “He’s the father of my child.”

“And if you die, Eileen is gonna be left with him. I don’t think that’s what you want.”

She shook her head. The options were obvious.

“We’ll keep him detained for now. He’s probably got some speeding ticket or something that can justify it”, he continued, pulling away from her. “In the meantime, why don’t you go visit your sister in California for a while? I heard the weather is great.”

She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “I will...think about it. Thanks, Mikey.”

“When you’re ready to give your statement, we’ll be here”, he assured her. They both stood up – she left, but not before being stopped by Samantha on the way out – while he circled back to his own chair. It creaked under his weight, like an awful reminder that he should exercise more.

Now that he thought about this, though, he wasn’t sure there were gyms in Hawkins.

His mind didn’t wander there for too long before it was brought back to reality, when his eyes caught up on something on his desk – something other than the usual sugar crumbs or tax form. There was a badge there; stained with blood.

And he knew exactly who it belonged to.

* * * * *

**HAWKINS, 1985.**

“Have you guys decided which extra-curriculars you’re gonna do this year?” Dustin asked, waving through the mass of students that made their way into Hawkins High School.

“Why would I need that for?” Mike asked.

“For college, duh. It’s obligatory.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Pretty sure it’s not”, Lucas chipped in.

“Yes, it _is_. Mr. Clarke told me so.”

“Do you just hang out with teachers and adults after school all the time or…?”

“Shut up, Lucas.”

“I don’t have time to do any activities”, Mike said, clinging to his backpack. “I’m busy.”

“Right. Talking to Eleven all the time. Maybe this way you two can give it a break and let me use Cerebro a little, too! I gotta talk to Suzie, too, you know?”

“I told you, you can both use it. It’s not a big deal.”

“Yes, it is! The things Suzie and I talk about are private. Grown up stuff.”

“What kind of grown up stuff? Taxes?” Mike asked. Lucas and Dustin shared a knowing look.

He would figure out, eventually.

“I was thinking maybe we could start and AV club”, Dustin continued. “That would be cool.”

“That’s for nerds.”

“We _are_ nerds, Lucas. Come on! It would be fun! We could make videos for Will and El and Suzie, maybe make a movie.”

“He thinks he’s gonna be the next Spielberg,” Lucas scoffed.

“Why not? Someone’s gotta be.”

Their chat was interrupted by the sound of the bell, telling them to hail their asses to class. Mike was still stuck on the 'adult stuff’.

“What is it you talk about?” he asked Dustin, as they headed to bio, parting ways with Lucas as he headed to classic lit. “The election?”

“You’re getting there, Wheeler. You’re getting there.”

* * * * *

**NEW YORK CITY, 2000.**

“Okay. As your editor _and_ as your friend, I gotta be honest with you, Lucas. This is…not good”, the man in the tall chair said, leaned over his desk, as he flipped through the pages of the manuscript; the bald spot in the top of his head was particularly lustrous that morning. “I mean, when you brought the Mirror World trilogy to us… I was floored. It was incredible! The monsters were original, the setting was new, the work was raw and emotional and engaging, and it almost made me forget it was a sci-fi book. People were saying you could be the Stephen King of science fiction. And then came Nevermore, which was… Not great, but not every time’s a winner, right? But this… And the last three you brought in…” He pushed the stack of papers forward. “I don’t know.”

Lucas Sinclair, three-times #1 best-selling author of the New York Times, slouched down on the chair staring at his agent with a vacant expression, a lit cigarette hanging lazily from his lips. It was not the first time they had that conversation; it would probably not be the last. “And what do you want me to do about it, Brad?”

“Well I don’t know, now, do I? It’s you who needs to find that spark of passion inside of you again!”

“Easier said than done”, he said, folding his arms.

“Are you going through something? Are things with Monica working out?”

“She left me. Couple of weeks. But I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” Bradley insisted. He had been representing Lucas since he’d left high school; if there was someone who knew when something was up, it was him. “Weren’t you guys engaged?”

“She had other plans. It’s fine.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t keep saying it’s fine, would I?”

“Fair point. Why don’t you go on a vacation for a while? Change of view. Clear your head. I will see if I can extend your deadline for a couple of months, or – or maybe push this one under a pen name.”

“Or you can just put it on my name. It’s okay.” He stood up, putting his cig out on the tray. “Like you said, not every time is a winner.”

“Are you going to take my advice?” Bradley asked, just before he left.

“Probably not”, Lucas assured him, letting the door close in by itself.

Every conversation Lucas had with Bradley Allister always ended the same way, because while he was a great guy and a great agent, he was still, in the end of the day, an agent, and his focus was on the byline – how many copies could a story sell, and how fast. Lucas didn’t really care about that: what he wanted was to tell his stories, no matter how many people wanted to read them. He wasn’t the kind of guy that kept checking the newspaper every time there was a new review just to see if someone was showering him in glory – his mother and her paper collage had that covered.

And yeah, his later stories didn’t feel as real as the first ones, but then he hadn’t lived through them the same way, had he? He could describe the panic of being attacked by a demogorgon because he had lived through it.

And even his adventures on the Upside Down – or the Mirror World, as it came to be called - had to go under Bradley’s knife; El had to become a boy, because otherwise his novels would be branded as 'girl fiction’, and there was nothing more dreadful than that in the literary world. “A girl heroine doesn’t sell copies, Luke”, Allister had said. They still needed a girl, so Will had to become Wylla, since that played better with the damsel in distress angle. She became Mike’s love interest, because – with El being adopted by the Byers in the end - they wanted to avoid a _Empire Strikes Back_ incest twist, and El still being Mike’s love interest was out of the question.

“People can be queer, just not explicitly”, Bradley had explained.

Besides, it was all about selling copies, and nothing sells better than a boy’s quest to rescue his loved one from the claws of a monster, with his sidekicks by his side.

The weirdest part wasn’t even that he wasn’t the main character in his own stories – it was seeing so many reviews suggestion that 'Lucius’ should die in later books, because he didn’t contribute anything to the gang. It made him ask himself, what _did_ he contribute? Dustin was the brainiac, Mike was the leader, Will was the monster-magnet, Eleven was the superhero; even Max played out a part.

But he was just there. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong group of friends – none of which were too pleased when the first copies came out. Will was the only one who didn’t send him an angry voicemail.

The bar was on the floor and he was the only one who didn’t crawl under it.

“That reminds, I gotta call him,” he said to himself, as he headed down the escalator. The main hall of Allister & McAllister was vast and well-lit, with a glass roof that let in sunlight.

And then it didn’t.

It felt like the world slowed down around him. The day darkened and the building shook down to its core. When he looked up, he saw the glass give in under the weight of a monstrous arm as the Mind Flayer’s monster tore its way in, its gargantuan mouth open and ready to swallow him whole.

He stumbled backwards, tripping on the metallic step of the escalator; he ended up hitting the person coming behind him. “You alright, man?” the guy asked.

Lucas struggled to hold himself straight. Looking up, there was no sign of anything above him - just the sky and the sun, as it should be. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m… I’m fine”, he lied.

* * * * *

**HAWKINS, 1985.**

When the ball rang announcing the end of classes, Lucas was already outside the bio lab, waiting for his friends. Dustin was the first to come out; to Lucas’s surprise, however, Mike was hanging back, chatting up with Jennifer Hayes.

“What’s the deal with that?” Lucas asked.

“Beats me. They’ve been like that all class. They got paired up when Ms. Ratliff divided the class for the project. Can you believe she already gave us homework? First of class!”

“Mr. Baruchel was the same. He wants us to write some dumb short story or something.”

“Just copy the plot of a movie you know he hasn’t seen yet. Boom! Done.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Mike asked, joining them in the hall. He waved goodbye to Jenny as she passed them by.

“Nothing, Casanova”, Lucas teased.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lucas and Dustin shared _another_ knowing look, both turning to the end of the corridor, where Jenny had just been.

“What? No! She is just my lab partner! You guys know I love El.”

“Yeah, but this is high school. And you guys are long distance now. Sometimes those things don’t work”, Lucas said.

“And sometimes they do”, Dustin argued back.

“Do they, though?”

“Yes, they do!”

“_Do they, though?_ I mean, statistically speaking…” Lucas said, weighing his hands.

“Since when do you know anything about statistics? You can’t even _spell_ statistics!”

“And you can?”

“Yeah! S-T-A-S-T… Wait, no, S-T-A-”

“It doesn’t matter what the statistics say,” Mike interrupted. “El and I, we’re gonna make it work. That’s all that matters.”

“He’s so romantic”, Dustin mocked, drawing hearts in the air.

“That’s true, Dusty-bun,” Lucas jeered.

“Shut up, Lucas!”

* * * * *

**SILICON VALLEY, 2000.**

“Dustin? Can I see you in my office?” Mr. Penn – his boss – asked, leaning over his cubicle wall.

“I’m – I’m kind of in the middle of something important”, he argued, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“_Now_, Dustin”, the man insisted, and his nasal voice sounded almost like a screech.

The kind of voice one uses on a third-strike employee; it didn’t help that theirs was more of a two-strikes-and-you’re-out kinda company.

It wasn’t that Dustin was a bad employee – quite the opposite. He was among their best; which, of course, translated on him butting heads with all those who weren’t _as skilled_.

Though, to be fair, he also butted heads with those who _were_ skilled. _And_ his boss.

God. Especially the boss.

“Listen, if this is about the shrimp thing, Tyler is lying, I didn’t –”, he started, closing the glass door on his way in.

“What shrimp thing? What did you – you know what? We’ll deal with that later.” Mr. Penn sighed, sinking down on his chair. He was a stout, pudgy man with small eyes and a receding hairline, which he personally believe had grown sizably since Dustin’s arrival at Thunderbolt Tech.

They were a, according to the Times’ _10 businesses to watch out for in the turn off the millennium_, an ‘emerging tech company with the makings of a giant’. They had started out making low-budget, brainy video games before coming out with their own console – which, despite an industry-wide recess after Atari crashing and burning their ET game, somehow still sold out like water in the desert. In the last two decades then they had evolved and branched out, with their own line of mobile cellular phones coming out within the year’s end.

Which was were Dustin came in.

“I read your reports on the overheating batteries”, he said, wiping his forehead.

“Oh, yeah, right. I was working on it, actually. I think if we delay the release by a couple of months, we can –”

“We can’t _delay_ anything, Dustin. We have a deadline. Can you imagine what the higher ups will say if we cancel the Christmas launch?”

“But – it’s a catastrophic failure, sir, I don’t think –”

“But does it work? Does it do what it promises?”

Dustin opened his mouth to answer, but his voice didn’t come. Behind Mr. Penn, the glass windows gave a view of the city outside, shadowed by the reflection of the office.

It was exactly in said reflection he saw something crawling on the floor outside the room. Something that vaguely resembled a pet he’d had as a teenager.

And it wasn’t Mews. _Or_ Yurtle.

“Dustin? Dustin, does the product work or not?” Mr. Penn insisted, snapping him back into reality.

“I – yeah, I mean, it – it does, but there is the risk of an explosion if it reaches a critical temperature or – or under less-than-ideal conditions… Not to mention the risk of – of cancer and –”

“But what chances are we talking about here, 10, 5%? Henderson!”

Dustin stood up abruptly. His eyes were still on the thing crawling outside, which had quickly began to sprout arms.

“I – uhh – I will be right back”, he said, bolting out of the room. By the time he got into the corridor, however, the demopuppy was nowhere to be found.

Or maybe he had never been there at all.

But he couldn’t have imagined it, though, could he?

* * * * *

**HAWKINS, 1985.**

The Hargrove house had been uncommonly quiet the last few months – almost suffocating so. It didn’t use to be like that: there was always someone screaming, doors being slammed, someone being pushed against a wall.

It hadn’t been quite the same since the funeral.

It was a nice service. A lot of people had a lot of nice things to say about him; Mrs. Wheeler especially so. Most of the things said there weren’t true, but the rules say you can’t badmouth a dead person – no matter how much he deserved it.

Or maybe he didn’t. It was hard to tell.

His mother didn’t come to the funeral, but she and his father talked on the phone for a long time. It was the first time Max had seen him cry, or really show any kind of emotion besides anger; she thought next that cows would begin to fly off around them, but that didn’t happen.

She wished it had. At least then they would have something to talk about. Instead they had long, quiet dinners where the sound of cutlery and whatever was on the TV filled the entire house. Max almost missed the screams.

At least when they were screaming she would have somewhere else to go – Lucas, but now they were on a break. Hang out with the other kids, but each of them seemed to be doing their own thing now that they didn’t play D&D anymore. El was gone, and none of the other girls liked her that much.

So she was alone, a stranger in a strange town; a stranger even to herself. School was back, and the sound of her alarm clock told her she was about to miss first period, but locked in her bathroom, all she could do was stare into her own reflection, trying to figure out who was looking back at her.

It felt like she had aged years, an old woman in the body of a child. They say tragedy does that to people.

She couldn’t figure out why it was a tragedy to her personally. They had never really liked each other; God, he had probably hated her guts. Why should she care that he died protecting her friend? Why _did_ she care some much?

He was in her arms when he took his last breathe. When she looked down on her hands, she could still feel his blood dripping out of them, no matter how many times she washed them.

Max picked up a pair of clippers her mom always left in the medicine cabinet. She felt like someone else – maybe she should look the part.

* * * * *

She could feel their eyes on her as she moved through the crowded hall of Hawkins High, knowing that they weren’t staring because she had already lost two periods. Some were snickering; some looked surprised; some were trying hard to hide their laughter – most weren’t. She owned up to the fact that she stood out among their colorful prints and kooky hairdos, her chopped hair and black-on-leather jacket (courtesy of a raid on Billy’s closet) a sore spot on the otherwise homogenous looks.

The boys were among those who looked like they had had the wind knocked out of their lungs. They were waiting by the message board, still arguing whether or not they should pick any of the extra-curricular activities offered there; Dustin had just suggested they started a new D&D game, now that they were missing a member, to which Mike promptly shut him down, before Lucas made them both shut it.

His chin was hanging so low a fly was about to make its way inside there.

“What… Happened to you?” He asked, when she approached them.

“You look like Ripley and Ronald McDonald had a child!” Dustin laughed. Mike elbowed him in the ribs.

“You’re always so tact. Like a blind person in a china store”, she said, squinting.

“Are you alright? We haven’t talked in a while”, Lucas intervened. “You wanna hang out later? The guys and I were thinking about setting up an AV Club.”

“Were we?” Mike asked.

Lucas shot him a dirty look. Max didn’t notice – or at least pretended not to – her eyes drifting towards the message board. She snagged one of the ads from it.

“I think I’m gonna be busy, actually”, she said. The ad, it reads, was a recruitment for the trial-outs of the lacrosse team.

* * * * *

**CALIFORNIA, 2000.**

The revving of the engines could be heard across the field as the motorbikes lined up under the hot afternoon sun; the bleachers were packed to the brick with fans, journalists and groupies, cheering for the bikers lining up at the starting point.

There was a young woman among them, wearing a t-shirt with a very deep v-neck – enough to separate the numbers 2 and 3 from each other. She was on the first row, waiving to the competitors, as she had done in all other circuits.

Her name was… Wendy, maybe. Or Wyllie. Something with a W.

The wearer of the number 23 was still trying to remember it when she heard a bike pull up next to her. She didn’t need to look to know who it was.

“Ready to eat my dust?” Lucas Paxton, number 18, asked, adjusting his hair inside his helmet.

Number 23 laughed. “You keep saying that, but who’s still 4 points ahead of you?”

“Not for long. If I win today, it won’t matter”, he said, cockily.

“_If_”, she emphasized.

“You really think you and your clapped out bike can win?” He scoffed.

She closed the visor out of her helmet. “Hold on to your brain bucket and you might just see.”

But if he was gonna see anything, it would be roost when she sped up ahead, leaving him – and the others – behind.

There was a reason, after all, why 23 was called MADMAXX - a nickname she had been carrying since Elementary school, through her sting with professional lacrosse, soccer, before landing on BMX. Knowing for ripping through the tracks like there was no tomorrow, she was an unstoppable force yet to meet her immoveable object; though, of course, many had tried, Paxton being the most persistent among them.

Perhaps if he had spent more time focusing on himself and less on trying to T-bone or block pass her, he’d have managed to get something other than second place.

Not that 23 really actually cared about any of it – in the field, she had one track mind (pun intended), which was to survive the jumps with her face, spine and bike intact. There was nothing quite like the thrill of looking death in the eye and making it blink. She had been chasing that feeling for years, and there was no moment when she was more alive.

Which her therapist had told her was not a healthy mindset, but there was also a very nice cash prize, so…

She landed the last double jump before the finish line, throwing in a bar-hop just to make the crowd go wild.

Lucas came in second, scrapping behind her by a matter of seconds – but still not fast enough. “That was luck”, he spat out, dismounting his ride.

“You say that every time, buddy”, she winked. Wilma – no, Welma – Whatshername was coming towards her, so her attention to her would-be nemesis didn’t last long.

There were more interesting things to keep oneself busy with.

* * * * *

Her back slammed against the wall of her trailer, a flurry of hair and hands and clothes being pulled away, as fast as it was possible. There was an urgency in the undressing that had very little to do with Max’s manager coming to annoy her at any possible minute.

Winnie – that was her name, it turned out – had tried to wax some poetry about how she missed her and how Max had promised she’d call, and something or another about a sponsorship deal, but Max was far more concerned about simultaneously undoing both her bra and hers, and she hadn’t really paid much attention.

She was successful – obviously – but her second victory of the day was short-lived.

“Maxine”, called out a voice; a voice she recognized, though she hadn’t haunted her it in years.

“Did you hear something?” She asked.

Winnie pulled away from kissing her stomach. “Heard what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

She pushed the girl down on the corner bed, kneeling down between her legs.

“Maxine…” called out the voice again - louder this time.

Max sat up straight. “Did you really not hear that?”

“Hear what?” Winnie asked, resting on her elbows. “Please don’t tell me we’re supposed to take your nickname serious.”

“No, it’s not – wait.”

She pulled the curtains of the window aside. He was there - away from her trailer, standing in the middle of the beaten down path, dripping blood from head to toe.

Billy.

“Max!” He screamed, and reached out for her.

And then he was gone.

* * * * *

**HAWKINS, 1985.**

“Okay. Okay. For the love of God, Steven, you have to guess this one”, Robin said, as she shuffled her cards. “What recent movie is an adaptation of a best-seller by Stephen King? Option A, The Shining. Option B, Gremlins. Option C, Ghostbusters.”

“Uh – he – he is a horror guy, right? So – I guess – Ghostbusters!”

Keith doubled-down over the counter laughing, while Robin went through the five stages of grief, but got stuck at anger. “Ghostbusters?! Ghostbusters, Steve? Oh my God. _Ghostbusters_?!”

“What? Horror stories. Ghosts. Ghostbusters. It makes perfect sense!”

“No, it doesn’t! No, it doesn’t!”

“How do you not know who wrote The Shining?” Keith asked, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.

“He’s got nothing going on under all this hair! It’s like a balloon, it’s filled with hair!”

It was a low day at Family Video. With all the kids going back to school and fall season on TV starting, most people had chosen not to rend movies for the time being. The trio, with nothing better to do, had chosen to play ‘guess the movie’, much to Steve’s chagrin. How was he expected to know all these names and dates and characters? He was too popular to know who the Goonies were.

All he knew was that Molly Ringwald was a babe. Emilio Estevez wasn’t that bad to look at, either…

“Hem-hem”, called someone, from behind the counter. They hadn’t noticed someone had walked into the shop; a regrettable mistake, given what that someone looked like.

It was a tall black girl about their age, with long black curls and the clearest brown eyes either of them had ever seen. She had the kind of high cheekbones that could cut through glass, and given the opportunity, she would’ve.

“Hi. I’m looking for a movie – well, obviously”, she chuckled, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. She had a British accent, because obviously she had. “I’m Zia. I called in earlier, said I was gonna come pick it up.”

“Right. Right, right, right”, Robin said, in the kind of way that made she look like she was about to have a spasm. “It’s, uh, it’s –”

“It’s _Born for Danger_. It’s under the counter”, Steve said, rolling eyes. Good to know he wasn’t the only one who made a fool of himself in front of girls.

“Right. Of course. I knew that.”

Steven smirked to himself. Good to see he wasn’t the only one who made an absolute fool of himself in front of a pretty girl.

“You know, you kinda look like the guy in the cover”, Robin said, handing her the box.

“Because all black people look the same?”

“What? No! No, that’s not – I mean – I just –”

“I’m kidding. He’s my brother”, she explained, lifting it next to her face.

“Your brother is a movie star?” Keith asked, suddenly very interested.

“And he lives in Hawkins?” Steven chipped in, raising a more important point.

“Not really. But we have family in town. We stopped by to visit – but my brother is a narcissist, he likes to watch himself as often as possible.” She smiled, but one could hear the resentment in her voice. “We’re actually throwing a little party later…if you’re interested.”

“Really? Parties. I love parties!” Steve said, somehow missing the clear fact that Zia was looking directly at Robin, who had managed to turn sixteen different shades of pink.

“Ah. Yes. You guys should come, too”, Zia said, excitedly, though her eyes said otherwise. “We’re in the big house up Elizabeth Street. Can’t miss it.”

“We actually have your info on file”, Keith said, tapping softly over their desktop monitor.

“I knew that. I knew that”, she said. She didn’t know that. “I will see you folks at eight, then.”

“Can’t wait!” Robin shouted, perhaps a little more excited than she should have.

She waited until Zia had left the room to turn to Steve, her mouth hanging open in shock.

“Did you see what just happened?” she asked, shaking him by the shoulders.

“Yeah, bud. Looks like we are partying with a movie star tonight. Wait until Dustin hears about this!”

“You’re not bringing a fourth grader to a party, Steve!”

“He’s in high school!”

* * * * *

**LOS ANGELES, 2000.**

“So, let’s talk about the future”, urged the reporter, Vanessa Lyle, as she leaned back on the squeaky armchair. “What can we expect from Steven Harrington going forward?”

“Well, you know, most of it is still in development, so I can talk about it yet”, Steve said, running his hand through his hair. “But it’s exciting stuff! Certainly exciting.”

“Nothing you can preview for us?” She asked, tapping her prn on her notepad. “Your fans are curious where they will see you next, now that the No Man’s Land trilogy is coming to an end. Is it true you will step away from doing horror from now on?”

“It’s certainly not my favorite genre”, he left out a strangled laugh, scratching his left arm instinctively.

“So there is no chance you will star on the adaptation of Lucas Sinclair’s novel? Some say you’d be perfect for Sheriff Harper.”

Steven looked down on himself. He had put on a bit of weight for the last movie, but it was mostly muscle – he hadn’t let himself go quite that badly, had he? “Who is saying that?”

“Who isn’t?” She smirked. “Your fans were crushed when you passed on the chance of portraying Cyclops on this year’s X-Men blockbuster…”

“Yeah, it’s like I told Bryan Singer – love the character, but I’m not a fan of the whole casting couch process. Not that we’d – I mean, I’m sure I’m a little too old for – wait, you know what? Can we just – can we just cut that last part out?”

He flailed forward, any cool guy pretense flushed down the toilet. His agent, sitting on the stool by the kitchen of his expensive LA penthouse, was all but ready to strangle him with her eyes – not for the first time, certainly not for the last.

Steven had been in the business for the last ten years, and he still had not learned when to keep his mouth shut.

It was a talent. She just wished he’d use it for something other than shooting himself on the foot.

Luckily – or not – for him, the interview was interrupted shortly after, when the porter downstairs phoned in to inform him there was someone waiting for him downstairs.

“Says it’s urgent business”, he said.

“Who is it? If it’s Rob Thomas again, tell him that, like I said the other three times, I’m too old to play a high schooler on his little Warner show.”

“No, she says it is an old friend”, the porter clarified. “Told to call you… Doofus.”

Steve smiled. “Sorry, Ms. Lyle, but we’re gonna have to cut this interview short. Business calls.”

“Another of your secret projects?” She inquired, with a raised eyebrow.

“Not… Quite.”

He practically bolted out of the door and into the elevator, tripping on his own feet in the process. She was waiting downstairs, turned towards the entrance, just so she could dramatically turn around and remove her sunglasses when she heard him approaching.

“Look what the cat dragged in. Robin Denise Banks”, he said pulling her into a hug. “Or should I call you Agent Banks now?”

“Robin is fine. It’s been a while.”

“And so it has! What have you been up to? How’s the FBI life going?”

“Could be better. That’s actually why I’m here”, she said, brushing a strand of hair from her face.

“What? I didn’t do anything! Did I do something?”

“It’s not you, it’s Hawkins. We should find somewhere private to talk.”

* * * * *

**SAN FRANCISCO, 1985.**

“You shouldn’t force it”, Will said, stopping in front of El’s door. He folded his arms and leaned against the frame. “It’s gonna come back on its own.”

“You don’t know that”, Eleven said. She remained laid over her bed, squinting and grunting at an empty can of coke – waiting. Hoping.

That had all she’d been doing, in the rare moments Mike would let her unplug her ears from her walkie-talkie.

Then again, there wasn’t much else to be done around there once they were done unpacking.

“It’s just gonna make you feel worse”, he insisted, adjusting his backpack over his shoulder.

“I’m worse now”, she said, more a whisper than a full sentence; he didn’t hear. He had already left.

Will couldn’t understand – none of them could understand it, even if Joyce had tried being as supportive as she could. But losing her powers was kinda like losing a limb; and in the same way an amputee would someone run their fingers over the place where said limb used to be, almost as if they could still feel it somehow, El would do the same.

Except, in her case, she was hoping you reach towards and _really_ feel it back.

Insofar, however, nothing but heartache.

El reached out for the can again, closing her eyes and focusing on that fixed point. She cleared her mind and gave it all she had – and for a moment, for the briefest moment, she felt she was doing it. She had made the can move.

But when she opened her eyes, she realized it was just the breeze coming from the bay through the open window.

She sighed, and sunk her head into the mattress. No! She would not let this deter her! If not today, then tomorrow, for sure!

* * * * *

**NEW YORK, 2000.**

The steam raised in fizzing clouds, accompanied by the sound of food frying, plates clashing and washing and people nervously talking as they came in and out of the kitchen. To say there was a sense of urgency in the air was an euphemism; to be fair, the place was usually always like that, but in that evening, it had been taken up to eleven.

No pun intended.

It wasn’t like those working at _The Nightingale_ weren’t used to stress – that comes with running the busiest restaurant in NYC. Between serving politicians, stars and anyone worth anything among the _crème-de-la-crème_ of high society, their clientele had to book a table with months in advance - and as such, they expected service to match.

It was, however, the first time any of them had waited on actual royalty.

The president was about to have a meeting with the prince of some rich European country – the kind that one doesn’t have in the Oval office, it seemed. It was not the first time they hosted this kind of meeting, but certainly the first involving such prominent figures.

The cooks shouted at each other across the room, trying – and mostly failing – to keep their cool. With the president waiting and the prince arriving at any minute, everything had to be ready; all hands on deck.

Well – almost all hands.

“Where is she?” One of the waitresses asked.

“In the back”, one of the cooks answered. “She’s on the phone with her mother or something.”

“Now? Is this the right time?”

“It’s about her brother’s memorial or something”, he shrugged.

“Too bad”, the waitress said, marching towards the back-patio. Jane?”

"Just a moment”, Jane shouted, barely pulling the phone out of her ear. “Like I said, don’t worry, I’ll help in what I can, but are you sure –”

“Jane!”

“_What_?” She asked, through gritted teeth.

“The president wants to talk to the chef. Since that’s _you_, figured you’d want to know.”

“Shit. Uh, Joyce, listen, I – I gotta go. But I will talk to you soon okay? Love you too. Bye.”

She put the phone back. The waitress, Elaine, was still waiting.

“I thought he was only gonna come at seven,” Jane said, peeved.

“He also said he was gonna improve healthcare, and yet…”

She laughed. That was fair.

Jane pulled her hairnet off, putting it over a table. In doing so, she accidentally knocked off one of the knives the other cook had left when he threatened to gut one of his co-workers like a fish if his fillet wasn’t where he wanted it in five minutes.

She reached out for it by instinct.

And the knife stopped mid-air.

And stayed there.

Jane herself froze, keeping her hand in position. It had been years – God, over a decade – since she had managed to do anything like. She thought she never would again. She thought it was over.

“Jane? Girl, come on!” Elaine insisted.

And then the knife fell.

* * * * *

**SAN FRANCISCO, 1985.**

“Are you sure this is alright with you, honey?” Joyce asked, for the nth time, while sorting out through her colored pencils and brand new notebooks. “I don’t want to feel like I’m overstepping…”

“It’s fine, mom”, Jonathan assured, also for the nth time. “You deserve it.”

“Yes, I know, but college is _so_ important, and I don’t want you - I don’t want you to abandon your dreams just so I can –”

Jonathan placed his arms firmly on her shoulders, so she could stop shaking the glue stick everywhere. “Mom, relax. It’s fine. College is not for everyone.”

“Don’t let Will hear you say that”, she said, sternly. He chuckled.

“Alright – but I mean it. If one of us should go to college, at least it should be you. Besides, before they were killed and merged together into an inter-dimensional monster made out of human flesh, my old bosses gave me a great letter of recommendation, I’m pretty sure I’ll land that job at the newspaper.”

“I’m sure you will”, she said, tapping softly on his chest. “God knows we’re gonna need the extra money.”

“We’re gonna make it work, mom. We always do”, Jonathan assured her, with the kind of certainty of someone who didn’t know how finances worked.

“I know. But maybe… maybe it’s not the best moment for me to go back to school”, she said. “I mean, I have the job at the grocery store, and I have to homeschool El…”

“Maybe you could just… Let Eleven go to school?”

Joyce threw him a sceptic look. “Please. She can’t do basic Algebra.”

“Neither can Will, probably. Neither can I, for that matter.”

She laughed, shaking her head. She didn’t feel like El was quite ready to go to school yet. Not after… Just. Not yet.

Joyce sat back on her chair. The materials she had gathered - at a discount, obviously – were scattered around the table, a reminder of her upcoming semester at the nearby community college. Nursing classes. The idea had come to her, and it seemed good; well-embraced by the rest of the family, even.

But she just wasn’t sure.

To be fair, Joyce wasn’t sure of a lot these days.

“It would be good for Will to have someone in his corner, at this new school”, Jonathan continued, adjusting his tie in front of the mirror in the corridor. His mother had insisted he wore one for the interview, even though it made him look like a square – which, well, he _was_, but his potential bosses didn’t need to know that. “And it would free up a lot of your time.”

“The more free time I have, the more time I have to think, and I really don’t want to think about anything”, she said, organizing her markers by color. “And that’s not what I want for now.”

“Let’s see how long that lasts”, he said, with a shrug. “Is Will up yet? I can give him a ride to school.”

“He already left. I think he wants to make a good first impression.”

Jonathan grimaced. “And he left early?”

“He didn’t say what kind of impression it was.”

“I’ll see if I can pick him up on the way back. Bye mom.”

“Bye! And – good luck!”

“Don’t worry, everything is gonna turn out just fine.”

* * * * *

**SAN FRANCISCO, 2000.**

“‘Jonathan was a great son, an incredible brother, an amazing photographer’… No, that sounds artificial. ‘Jonathan was beloved by all of those who’d met him’… No, that’s definitely not true. Ugh!”

Joyce rested her head over the messy kitchen table, amidst the paper balls, colored pens and notebooks she had wasted the last few days. Nobody had told her how difficult it would be to write a eulogy.

Nobody had told her she would need to write one for her own son, either.

It wasn’t right. It didn’t _feel_ right. Sons aren’t supposed to go before their parents! _He_ should be the one to do it, not the other way around!

Not that she wanted to die; obviously not. But if it meant having Jonathan back…

She sighed. It had been ten years – ten years since he had disappeared. Ten long, painful years of uncertainty. She had tried to tell herself, maybe he could still be out there, somewhere, waiting for her to come and help; maybe it was something to do with the Upside Down - there hadn’t been any signs but she still dug around anyway.

But there was nothing. At least nothing that gave her hope, anyway.

Others – Will, especially – had told her he wasn’t the only one. Other reporters had gone missing around that same time, too; in fact, any photographer in Russia around the time the USSR came crashing down was lucky to escape.

Jonathan just… Hadn’t been.

It was Will’s idea to do the memorial now. It had been ten years; felt like the right time to put him to rest.

Will and Jane had confirmed they were coming. Steven, bless his soul, had even offered to pay for the ceremony – she wasn’t even sure they had been friends, but he was always calling her up for news.

A traumatic supernatural experience really does bind people together.

There were no news from Nancy, however. They hadn’t ended in the best of terms as far as Joyce could remember, but she was expecting Ms. Wheeler – was she still going by Wheeler? Wasn’t she married now? – to at least show up.

Maybe that was expecting too much.

Joyce stretched out and stood up. Maybe she needed to eat something, recharge her batteries before going back to writing. Not that she really thought it would help, of course – how does one find the courage to say goodbye to their own child? – but it would at least be worth the try.

From the other room, she could hear the gentle snoring of Johnny – Will’s baby boy. He’d spent every afternoon with Granny; she just couldn’t fathom letting him be with a babysitter. Not at this age, anyway. Maybe when a little… But also probably not.

Judging by the time, Will was coming over to pick him up at any moment – oh, there was the door knock, right on schedule.

Except it sounded… Different than usual. More urgent. More demanding.

She hesitated. The knocks came again.

And then again.

Then a voice called her. A broken, tired, breathless voice. A voice she had waited to hear for years – “Mom? It’s me.”

* * * * *

**SAN FRANCISCO, 1985.**

There is something about sitting silently in a classroom, fifteen minutes before school starts, when most of students haven’t arrived yet. It’s something about the calm – the quiet. The birds chirping in the windows. A janitor washing the tiles on the second floor in the hopes of a student not seeing the ‘careful’ sign and sleeping, the sound of their mops resonating through the corridors; everything was peaceful.

But it was not why Will had left his house earlier than necessary.

He had figured that if he arrived earlier, not only would he avoid all eyes turning towards him once he walked into class - as it was prone to happen with newbies – but it also gave him a chance to choose the perfect seat. Not too in the front, to avoid being a teacher’s pet, and not too in the back, to avoid being mistaken for one of the troublemakers. Squarely in the middle. Completely normal. Just another average among averages.

Of course, he didn’t take in consideration that others would be looking at him when _they_ arrived. He wasn’t that good at planning ahead, unfortunately.

He was hoping that if he crouched enough, the students coming in would not notice him.

One could hope.

“Nah dude, I’m telling you, I’m not doing it again. I already did it for the last three campaigns! Somebody else gotta step up. I ran out of ideas!”

Will’s head bolted up, away from the comic book he had convinced Jonathan to buy for him the day before, his metaphorical antennae perking up at the mere mention of anything even vaguely related to D&D, like a metal detector going off the charts. He met eyes with the leader of the trio that had just walked into the glass; a white boy with brown hair and thick-rimmed glasses, followed by a black girl with curly hair and a Chinese boy that was at least a head taller than the other two.

The white boy raised an eyebrow and, with a simple nod, guided his friends towards where Will was sitting.

“Hi there,” he said, in a high-pitched tone, sitting in the chair in front of him, but turned. “You’re new.”

“I…am”, Will said, hesitant. “I’m Will.”

“Will. Will, Will, Will, Will, Will”, he repeated, his tongue clicking in the roof of his mouth. “Will, from William. Old German. ‘Determined protector’.”

Will frowned. The girl rolled eyes. She was sitting next to her friend, while the Asian boy took the empty seat next to Will’s. “Ignore him. He’s just weird.”

“I’m not _weird_. I’m Quentin, by the way. These are Makayla and Eugene.”

“_We_ are not ashamed to admit we are weird”, Eugene said, leaning back on his chair. “Where you from, Will?”

“Indiana. My family just moved.”

Quentin’s eyebrows furrowed. “Are you from the place where the mall burned down? It was all over the news.”

“Yeah. That was a whole thing.”

Will scratched the back of his neck – more an involuntary reaction than anything these days. Nothing bad had happened. There was nothing to worry about.

“Genie, switch seats with me”, Quentin said, in a kind of bossy tone that reminded Will of Mike.

Eugene made a face that was somewhere between disgruntled and resigned, and he obliged. Quentin scooted over, his eyes falling down to the currently forgotten comic in Will’s desk.

“You like comics?’ he asked.

"Yeah. The X-Men, mostly, these days.”

“I’m more of a DC kinda guy, but Makayla loves them. We go to the comic book store every Wednesday and we pretend to buy stuff while we read the new issues. You wanna come with us one of these days?”

“Yeah. That sounds like fun”, Will said, hesitant. Quentin flashed him another smile full of pearly white teeth and in that moment, for the first time in a long while, Will didn’t feel so alone anymore.

* * * * *

**SAN FRANCISCO, 2000.**

“Mr. Byers! Mr. Byers! Tony hit me!” Little Susie Arlington, age 7, came crying to him, with aforementioned Tony Riccioli right on her tracks.

“Did not!” He shouted.

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

“Did too! He hit me and he pulled my ponytail!” She whined.

“Anthony, did you hit Susan?” Will asked, folding his arms, switching to his best 'stern teacher’ expression.

“We were just playing, Mr. Byers! I swear!”

“So that is a yes, then. I am very disappointed in you, Anthony”, he said. Tony’s lips were trembling. “Apologize to Susan.”

“I’m sorry, Susan”, the little boy said, looking down his feet. “I’m sorry too, Mr. Byers.”

“Very good. Now promise you’ll never do it again – and _mean_ it.”

“I promise! I promise!”

“Great. Now go play – something you _both_ like to play. I’ll be watching.”

The kids ran off, back to the playground, the fight already buried and forgotten. Nearby, another teacher, Quentin, observed the scene.

“Damn. You used the ’d’ word. Harsh”, he said, approaching him.

“But necessary. This kind of behavior we gotta nip at the bud”, Will assured.

“True.” Quentin leaned against one of the pillars in the courtyard. “I don’t know what’s worse – that we gotta teach them this stuff or that their parents don’t.”

“Both.”

Quentin pulled out a cigarette from his pocket and stuck it between his teeth. Will snatched it quickly and threw it down, crushing it under his foot.

“You know I hate it when you smoke. It’s gonna ruin your lungs.”

“Aww. Are you worried about my health?”

“Of course. You want me to be a widower by the time I’m 40?”

Quentin laughed. Leaning forward, he grabbed Will – his boyfriend of seven years, husband for the last four – by the waist, pulling him into a kiss; Will was quick to break it off.

“Not here”, he said, looking around nervously.

“Why not? The administration knows we’re together.”

“The kids don’t. You don’t want them going off to tell their parents he saw Mr. Byers and Mr. Rivers making out. Who knows what that would bring.”

“I don’t see the big deal. It’s San Francisco – half these kids have seen their mommies _and_ their daddies blowing their gardeners.”

“And that is none of _our_ business. Only what we do here is.”

Quentin rolled eyes. “Alright, alright. Jeez. You know, when I said I liked that you were a tight ass, this was not what I meant.”

“Too late to find _that_ out, babe.”

Will would have liked nothing more than to display his affection public – but he also knew better. Last thing he wanted was for either (or worse, both) of them to lose their jobs. Their budget was already tight as it was, and he didn’t want to take on his mother’s offer to move in with her. Those walls were far too thin.

Still, he hated that his co-workers could talk about their dates and wives and husbands without care, while most of them didn’t even know he and Quentin were together.

Maybe someday that would change. Maybe someday it would be different.

But it sure as hell wasn’t now.

“Did you talk to your mother? About the memorial?” Quentin asked. “She wanted help with the speech, I think.”

“Not yet, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“What about Jane? Bill? Bill?”

But Will didn’t answer – he had stopped, frozen in place, his eyes fixed in the horizon; he felt a chill run up his spine, coming from deep within his soul, the kind of chill that spread through him and ripped everything on its awaken.

It was like he was falling, grasping for air, and the more he fell, the deeper it got.

The sky had turned blood-red.

He could not answer Quentin; all he could say was –

“He’s back.”


End file.
